Something like https://graphite.com/ to create stacked PRs that are reviewable probably would have helped. Can be replicated with local LLMs or remote AI providers with locally configured agentic workflows. Never used graphite personally, but I’ve seen some open source maintainers use it to split up large PRs.
Totally agree with your overall point.
That said, I have to come to the defense of my terminal UI (TUI) comrades with some anecdotal experience.
I’ve got all the same tools in Neovim as my VSCode/Cursor colleagues, with a deeper understanding of how it all works under the hood.
They have no idea what an LSP is. They just know the marketing buzzword “IntelliSense.” As we build out our AI toolchains, it doesn’t even occur to them that an agent can talk to an LSP to improve code generation because all they know are VSCode extensions. I had to pick and evaluate my MCP servers from day one as opposed to just accepting the defaults, and the quality of my results shows it. The same can be done in GUI editors, but since you’re never forced to configure these things yourself, the exposure is just lower. I’ve had to run numerous trainings explaining that MCPs are traditionally meant to be run locally, because folks haven’t built the mental model that comes with wiring it all up yourself.
Again, totally agree with your overall point. This is more of a PSA for any aspiring engineers: TUIs are still alive and well.
There is a praise/validation kink for that.
So, I don’t use OpenWRT (for main router), but generally in each vlan you will need:
Toooo real. Its like companies have taken the worst of everything and just call it agile. List out every task and estimate them so we have timelines, but don’t actually architect anything as that’s waterfall. Fake waterfall, with fake dates, but fingers will be pointed like they were real commitments, and spend a month doing it for this executive power point instead of fucking off so devs can build the damn thing.
I ended up just building a box after looking for the perfect NAS and finding it didn’t exist. The software is usually just crap or the hardware is underwhelming. Got a Node 804 case to slap in plenty of HDD space. Running NixOS so I’m in control of the software. In retrospect I wish I had gotten a rackmount type case. Tossed in an Arc GPU for better transcoding shortly after the initial setup.
Major desktop environments are KDE as you mentioned and Gnome.
Arch wiki is a good resource even if not running arch. You may want to look into their dotfiles page to back up your settings: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dotfiles.
NixOS ended up being my distro of choice for reproducible installs but it has a high learning curve and poor documentation so I wouldn’t recommend to start with. That said you can still use Nix on other distros with home manager to manage dotfiles and install non-system apps.
Distros just pick the default things to install. You can always use the package manager to install something else like a better file manager.
A lot of choices are simply subjective so its hard to recommend any one distro. Mint is close to windows, based on Ubuntu and uses Gnome. Ubuntu based on Debian I find to be user friendly. Not used a Fedora based distro in ages but there is also Silverblue I’ve heard mentioned positively.
Distros like Arch and NixOS are more design your own system setups. Pick what you want. I used arch for a bit, but got annoyed at keeping all my systems in sync. Had a huge wiki of all the tweaks I made. Then scripts to automate some of it. I started looking at automation tooling like ansible when I found nix.
This is why we trust but verify. Thanks mom for teaching me that cruel lesson of unplugging the phone cord to get me to bed (dial up days). It lasted about a week before I caught on you always came up from the basement before bed.
I’m so glad you never noticed I swapped my line with the guest bedroom. Also glad that ancient block in the basement could be hand wired.
The original used XI where it was 9 or 11 depending on the side.
edit: Nope I was wrong. That post links this one, lol.
Sounds like one of my 10 alarms, all with different tones, to make sure I wake up. This one is Krypton on Android.
For the networking I found some repos with Nix and Gluetun (OCI containers). I don’t see them in my bookmarks, so it was probably a day project when I set up and didn’t keep the references.
That part is still in docker / podman. So any docker network guide just needs to be translated to nix.
Best resource I’ve found is searching GitHub.
My setup closely follows https://github.com/Misterio77/nix-config.
For servarr I just translated someone else’s docker compose setup to nix. There are some ready made nix ones you can look at like https://github.com/rasmus-kirk/nixarr/tree/main/nixarr.
The complex networking I just picked up over time once I knew my way around a little bit.
GitHub is your best resource. lang:nix search terms.
I wouldn’t run NixOS in a container. With native nix containers I’m pretty sure they share the store. For docker I’d use images built with nix (doesn’t run nix itself) or pull from docker hub.
OS: NixOS (high learning curve but its been worth it). Nix (the config language) is a functional programming language, so it can be difficult to grok. Documentation is shit as its evolved while maintaining backwards compatibility. If you use the new stuff (Nix Flakes) you have to figure what’s old and likely not applicable (channels or w/e).
BYOD: Just using LVM. All volumes are mirrored across several drives of different sizes. Some HDD volumes have an SSD cache layer on top (e.g., monero node). Some are just on an SSD (e.g., main system). No drive failures yet so can’t speak to how complex restoring is. All managed through NixOS with https://github.com/nix-community/disko.
I run stuff on a mix of OCI containers (podman or docker, default is podman which is what I use) and native NixOS containers which use systemd-nspawn.
The OS itself I don’t back up outside of mirroring. I run an immutable OS (every reboot is like a fresh install). I can redeploy from git so no need to backup. I have some persistent BTRFS volumes mounted where logs, caches, and state go. Don’t backup, but I swap the volume every boot and keep the last 30 days of volumes or a min of at least 10 for debugging.
I just use rclone for backups with some bash scripts. Devices back up to home lab which backs up to cloud (encrypted with my keys) all using rclone (RoundSync for phone).
Runs Arrs, Jellyfin, Monero node, Tor entry node, wireguard VPN (to get into network from remote), I2C, Mullvad VPN (default), Proton VPN (torrents with port forwarding use this), DNS (forced over VPN using DoT), PiHole in front of that, three of my WiFi vlans route through either Mulvad, I2C, or Tor. I’ll use TailsOS for anything sensitive. WiFi is just to get to I2C or Onion sites where I’m not worried about my device possibly leaking identity.
Its pretty low level. Everything is configured in NixOS. No GUIs. If its not configured in nix its wiped next reboot since the OS is immutable. All tracked in git including secrets using SOPS. Every device has its own master key setup on first install. I have a personal master key should I need to reinstall which is tracked outside of git in a password manager.
Took a solid month to get the initial setup done while learning NixOS. I had a very specific setup of LVM > LUKS encryption /w Secure Boot and Hardware Key > BTRFS. Overkill on security but I geek out on that stuff. Been stable but still tinkering with it a year later.
I saw that documentary. “The Wolf of Wall Street” or something? Maybe that was actually late 80s-early 90s.
On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month. I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my “back pain”, Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine… Well, because it’s awesome.
You need downers to ride the uppers and get that perfect drug fueled circadian rhythm going.
Energy drinks during the day and a nice indica bong/dab rip, edible, or blunt in the evening.
Warning: If things have escalated to cocaine/meth/adderall to go up and opiates and a handy from the local masseuse to go down, you’re probably riding the rhythm too hard.
/s please take care of yourself!
My work laptop is a Dell Precision. It was a “data science” model that came with Ubuntu. Wiped Dell’s modified Ubuntu and put vanilla Ubuntu on it and now running Nixos. Works great. There was a weird period when using triple monitors with their dock had an intermittent issue on boot where resolutions and monitors were not being detected. Cause was Nvidia drivers. It eventually got resolved and it was easy enough to rollback the drivers to one that worked.
Immutable Nixos. My entire server deployment from partitioning to config is stored in git on all my machines.
Every time I boot all runtime changes are “wiped”, which is really just BTRFS subvolume swapping.
Persistence is possible, but I’m forced to deal with it otherwise it will get wiped on boot.
I use LVM for mirrored volumes for local redundancy.
My persisted volumes are backed up automatically to B2 Backblaze using rclone. I don’t backup everything. Stuff I can download again are skipped for example. I don’t have anything currently that requires putting a process in “maint mode” like a database getting corrupt if I backup while its being written to. When I did, I’d either script gracefully shutting down the process or use any export functionality if the process supported it.
https://github.com/newhinton/Round-Sync - Android rclone port.
Its done on a schedule but I backup once a day to backblaze b2 using my own keys for full e2ee by wrapping the b2 remote with a crypto remote. Been set it and forget it for about 3 years. Supports many other cloud or self hosted remotes.
Its not in any store last I checked. I use https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium to manage installing and updating.